Hi everyone, we made this tool as we found that there was alot of news coverage around high salaries around the bay area without taking in consideration the high taxes and cost of living. The focus on the nominal amount is misleading people about how much they might actually earn in discretionary income. After coming across this problem, we wondered what it was like to live in other cities around the country as designers and developers. Thus, the Cheddar Counter was born.
The Cheddar Counter is much more than your typical cost of living calculator – it accounts for differences in salary across geographies, the impact of taxes, as well as cost of living. Drawing from publicly available data, this tool will allow you to see where you can earn the most income for your profession and how those dollars can be stretch by living somewhere with an overall lower threshold of taxes and living expenses.
We hope you find it useful. Looking forward to your questions and feedback.

This is amazing-- great work. Many people forget that living in NYC especially is a double-whammy. You need a higher income to meet basic expenses, and this is taxed at a higher tax rate. Cities in the southeastern U.S. are an especially good bargain even with lower salaries.

To turn this into a constructive comment, it would be great to be able to input your own values, or at least understand where they are coming from in the results. I like that the taxes portion is automatic, as that's not something I would know off hand, but it would be helpful to maybe put in your own current location, and expenses, and use a cost of living adjustment to factor in the results.